Description: This winter and spring The Frick Collection will celebrate the generosity and discerning taste of former Director Charles A. Ryskamp (1928-2010) with an exhibition of works on paper from his bequest. This generous gift transforms the museum's holdings in drawings, enlarging them by nearly a third, while complementing the permanent collection's focus on the landscape and figural subjects favored by Henry Clay Frick. The works will be exhibited for the first time at the Frick in the Cabinet, a space created by Dr. Ryskamp during his tenure as Director from 1987 to 1997 and intended especially for the display of works on paper.
The drawings were chosen from Dr. Ryskamp's extensive collection by Director Emerita Anne L. Poulet, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey, and Senior Curator Susan Grace Galassi. The varied subjects and styles of the works speak to the vibrant intellect of Dr. Ryskamp, who equated the collecting of art with the acquisition of knowledge. Three drawings are by artists already represented in The Frick Collection: a landscape in pencil by Pierre-Etienne-Theodore Rousseau, an early academic nude by Edgar Degas, and a pen-and-ink study of a young man by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Other works -- by artists such as George Stubbs, William Blake, and Eugene Delacroix -- were selected for their quality and art historical significance. The installation will also include two oil-on-paper studies of clouds by John Constable, which Dr. Ryskamp was instrumental in bringing to the Collection in 2001.